Anti-abortion (laws) didn’t cause women to stop having abortions but upped their mortality rate, risk of damage to their bodies, shame, ridicule. See the parallel? When we make things illegal we tend to make them inherently more dangerous. If we simply accept laws as what is good for us we have many greater problems. Street drugs are dangerous because they are illegal and there is no quality control. Period, end of story.

So much of our time and energy seems to be spent refuting inaccurate information, speaking out against stigmatizing policies, and dealing with reactionary policy makers who seem incapable of simply saying “We’re sorry, we were wrong.” The worst part is that this takes away from the life-saving work that needs to be done.

This is an incredibly important moment nationally, and locally, to ensure we invest in strategies that we know work and not allow hysteria to guide our solutions to the overdose crisis. These stories cause very real harm: they perpetuate fear and stigma against people who use drugs resulting in negligent care, isolation and diversion of resources towards law enforcement and away from life-saving programs. A culture of increased criminalization, hostility and shame–all while wearing expensive hazmats suits, will do nothing to save lives.

To get back to the err … warning that I’ve received, you may take it with however many grains of salt you wish; that the brown acid that is circulating around us is not specifically too good. Err… it’s suggested that you do stay away from that. Of course it’s your own trip so be my guest, but err… please be advised that there is a warning on that one ok.

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The people behind this site

Nigel Brunsdon

Nigel’s day job is being the Community Manager at HIT, he also runs the injectingadvice.com website and a number of other online harm reduction projects. In his spare time he can be found hiding behind a camera.

Craig Harvey

Craig is a committed harm reductionist, having worked primarily with people who inject drugs for two decades, both in the United Kingdom and Australia. A surfer, climber and wannabe novelist, he sometimes takes photographs too.